The Rays continued their winning ways of late by pulling off a sweep in a tough place, Houston. They needed it as the Yankees also swept their series so the Rays' division lead stands at a game. And we also made a trade that paid immediate dividends.
The opener was a tough game in that the Rays kept scoring runs, but Houston kept answering before the Rays ultimately prevailed 8-6.
Alex Kirilloff, who drove in 3, got things started with an RBI double in a 3-run first and they added 2 more in the 2nd. But the Astros answered with 3 as for a change it was the bats who had to pick up
Dustin May and not the other way around. He still got the win to go 9-1 but was 5.2 7 5 5 2 3 in one of his poorer outings.
Andrew Greckel (#18) and
Kody Hoese (#10) went back-to-back with solo shots in the 5th, and ultimately DL Hall notched the save (#7) by going the final two innings.
Transaction: The offense has been pretty decent this year (we're between 4th & 6th in the league in the main categories) and the starting rotation, while a little iffy on the back end, has been very good. That leaves our weakness as the bullpen which has had a lot of ups and downs this year and is 6th in the AL in ERA. So we made a deal to shore it up:
Uehara is an elite-caliber reliever even if the Mets didn't use him in save situations and will likely become our closer with Diego Castillo moving into a setup role. We needed a big-time bat-misser and here are Uehara's particulars:
That should work. His salary is $7M and he's arb-eligible so I'm looking at him as more of a rental that we can trade for something in the offseason. We say goodbye to Schnell, who should be a useful big-leaguer but didn't have a path to playing for us, and Castillo was a "make it work" throw-in.
Back to baseball.
Joe Ryan's brilliant (and contract) year continues as he was 6.1 4 0 0 0 9 in a 3-0 win over Houston. Ryan lowered his ERA to a minuscule 1.99, upped his record to 9-3 and has put himself in the Cy Young conversation. New pickup
Yasunari Uehara made his Rays debut with a scoreless 9th for the save. All 3 runs came via homer:
Andrew Greckel's 19th with a man on in the 1st and a solo shot from
Alex Kirilloff (#9) in the 3rd.
The Rays completed the sweep by taking a real back-and-forth affair with Houston 5-4 in 10 innings.
Kody Hoese led off the 9th with a solo homer off former Ray Nick Sandlin to tie it up and then in the 10th they loaded the bases against Sandlin and
Andrew Greckel's sac fly brought home the winner. They took an early 3-1 lead thanks largely to
Victor Robles, who scored twice and knocked one in on 3 hits, but Houston tied it off
Diego Castillo with a homer and scored another off the slumping
Christian Chamberlain to go ahead.
JT Ginn pitched decently at 5 6 2 2 0 4 and new boy
Yasunari Uehara was put to work again, this time pitching the 9th and preserving his own win in the 10th.
Team record: 41-28. Next up: The road swing continues with 3 in Baltimore.